The Sims 4

cherryghost

Look through any game on metacritic and there's a bunch of tossers giving bad reviews. I definitely wouldn't judge the games based of those reviews.

J_E

cherryghost wrote: »

Look through any game on metacritic and there's a bunch of tossers giving bad reviews. I definitely wouldn't judge the games based of those reviews.

The consensus is clear - it's not so much a sequel as a 3.5 with missing core features and lack of things like family trees... EA withholding review copies was a very telling sign. Can you not see when you've been had?

cherryghost

Cydoniac wrote: »

The consensus is clear - it's not so much a sequel as a 3.5 with missing core features and lack of things like family trees... EA withholding review copies was a very telling sign. Can you not see when you've been had?

I was one of the first to call it out... but I still wouldn't trust anything said on metacritic by users.

mayordenis

Yea the amount of systematic attempts to inflate or deflate user metascores of various games means you can't go blindly by that.

I'm not saying that they are wrong necessarily but currently it has 135 negative scores, I had a quick (likely wrong) count, and 42 of those 'reviews' gave it a 0.

Sims 4 - 0/10.

J_E

Oh I ignore the 0 ones to be honest.

humanji

So has anyone here played it?

I've been watching a few of the videos and it looks okay. The most striking thing about it is that it kind of looks empty. The Sims 3 world looked sculpted, where this one just looks flat and boring, with large spaces of nothing. And it doesn't help that the town maps are so tiny and sectioned off.

I have to say the actual animations are fantastic looking. There's a real difference between talking with a happy character and a sad character, for example. But that's all I've really seen that seems like a plus for the game. There's a few improvements here and there, that are outweighed by the missing content. Can't imagine bothering to get this until a few years time when you can get a cheap version with a expansion packs.

Vision of Disorder

I got it in the end (I know, I know...) and played for maybe 30-40 minutes last night. Not long enough to make a definitive judgement but I will say it does look nice and, while the interface is different enough that it took some getting used to, I didn't hate it from the get go. Further impressions will be shared as I play more.

Eogclouder

I got it last night for about 30 quid. I managed to play a short amount. It seems like it'll be a lot of fun and not as terrible as I thought.

One thing tha drove me mad is all the pop up tutorials at the start that I had no way to disable. everything I clicked popped open a text bubble with an annoying noise that blocked part of the UI and kept telling me things I already knew. I found myself screaming "**** OFF" at the monitory after about 20 minutes of it.

Generic Dreadhead

Interesting if true, Pirated copies create a Pixelated trail following nude sims:
http://ie.ign.com/articles/2014/09/04/pirated-copies-of-the-sims-4-cause-screen-pixelation?utm_campaign=fbposts&utm_source=facebook

LoonyLovegood

Bought it, went to install it and apparently my code has been used already. I have no idea what's going on...

cherryghost

Shady seller?

Shiminay

Sounds like, where did you get it CTYI Girl?

AlanS181824

I've never been as disappointed with a game launch before.

EA would feck up the 1 good franchise they've left...

Sims 4 - Massive Disappointment.

Generic Dreadhead

AlanS181824 wrote: »

I've never been as disappointed with a game launch before.

EA would feck up the 1 good franchise they've left...

Sims 4 - Massive Disappointment.

Have you played it yet?
I want to hear feedback from someone who's plugged maybe 8+ hours into it

AlanS181824

Cormac... wrote: »

Have you played it yet?
I want to hear feedback from someone who's plugged maybe 8+ hours into it

I don't actually have it myself but my brother has.

It looks great and all but I feel very underwhelmed from my few minutes of play.

It just kind of seems like it's unfinished.

The new way to build houses seems to work great though.

Click a corner and drag.

Shiminay

Well if the game is actually working and not crashing machines and PCs alike, then that's better than most recent EA launches

I'd be interested in hearing about the later game content and how the experience overall is from start to maturity.

moonlighting

this guy does a good review of it

Generic Dreadhead

It looks underwhelming to say the least. See you in 3-4 years Sims 4

cherryghost

General consensus is the game is largely enjoyable but the amount of meat taken from the game is almost incomprehensible and downright insulting. Clearly another EA foray to add even more expansions to the game for more moolah.

Shiminay

Or it was a "let's not announce a ton of features our engineer's haven't finished building yet and get dragged over the coals again like we were with Sim City"

But it tells you all you need to know when people simply expect that EA will simply charge you for these features. There's a potentially great win for EA here if they start giving "missing" features away for free as updates and supplement that with "new" features as paid DLC - it's not ideal, but it's not abusive.

cherryghost

Shiminay wrote: »

Or it was a "let's not announce a ton of features our engineer's haven't finished building yet and get dragged over the coals again like we were with Sim City"

But it tells you all you need to know when people simply expect that EA will simply charge you for these features. There's a potentially great win for EA here if they start giving "missing" features away for free as updates and supplement that with "new" features as paid DLC - it's not ideal, but it's not abusive.

I think we both know they would never give away things for free for such a large franchise :P

Cravez

Bought it for the girlfriend and she gave it a go for a few hours yesterday. Says it's enjoyable but she does notice the lack of content. Definitely the game is more geared towards the 'Sim' rather than the overall experience (i.e better emotions, skills, ambitions, social interaction etc).

I do hope that EA stick their thumb out in the future updates for the game, and hopefully not charge top dollar for it.

Grumpypants

OSI wrote: »

I seem to recall getting a free game out of the whole SimCity debacle.

And BF3 and Peggle and wing commander 3

sparkle_23

I am really enjoying the game and how quick it loads up. I miss toddlers but the kids are sweet! I really miss the create-a-style tool. I love the multi tasking!

And when sims are in a certain mood they can cook certain foods, like when they are flirty they can bake heart shaped cookies. When they eat the cookies later they are in a flirty mood!

I thought the non open neighbourhood would bother me but I'm liking it compared to the lag I had with TS3.

I'm havin some problems with the auto save feature.. It keeps overwriting my saves and I lose progress

sparkle_23

Eogclouder wrote: »

I got it last night for about 30 quid. I managed to play a short amount. It seems like it'll be a lot of fun and not as terrible as I thought.

One thing tha drove me mad is all the pop up tutorials at the start that I had no way to disable. everything I clicked popped open a text bubble with an annoying noise that blocked part of the UI and kept telling me things I already knew. I found myself screaming "**** OFF" at the monitory after about 20 minutes of it.

You can turn it off in origin!

http://simsvip.com/2014/08/26/the-sims-4-turning-off-the-in-game-tutorial/

I found it helpful at first then it kept showing me the same stuff again & again...

humanji

I got to play a few hours last night and it is fun, but is a bit too lacking to be too much fun. It just feels so empty and directionless. I found it strange that they don't explain lots of it (and yet have those really irritating tutorial pop-ups). Things like there no longer being shops, or the weird little statues you can find when you dig up rocks (they can set a mood for yourself, but you're not really told why, or why some of them are marked as rare).

One of the fun things about the Sims in general is experimenting to find out how things are done, but the bits they're not explaining aren't really things that you can really figure out.

The size of the neighbourhood annoys me a lot too. Each section is tiny, but has buildings surrounding it, so when you zoom out it looks like a full area. But you're not able to go near these surrounding houses. It's really like Sim City's small maps where you should be able to build over the border, but they just don't let you.

It's annoying because what they do right is really good. The character interactions and emotions are well done and it's funny seeing how moods change the actions available. As Sparkle 23 said, you get different cooking options, or when you're confident they give you the option to "Pee like a champion".

But I've no real interest in buying this at the moment. Maybe in a year or two when expansion packs fill up the world.



Meanwhile...

How do you increase sales of Sims 4? By threatening people that if they don't buy it, they won't make Sims 5.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/09/08/sims-4-developer-warns-there-wont-be-a-sims-5-if-this-one-doesnt-sell/

nesf

humanji wrote: »

How do you increase sales of Sims 4? By threatening people that if they don't buy it, they won't make Sims 5.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/09/08/sims-4-developer-warns-there-wont-be-a-sims-5-if-this-one-doesnt-sell/

They'll buy it anyway. It's a bit like saying the crack addicts will hold off this week because it's a slightly less potent version of crack that's on sale. There's no big meltdown here, just a lack of features for a game that's pretty much defined by having an absurd amount of DLC. If you don't mind buying DLC you may not be particularly unhappy about Sims 4.

Shiminay

Which, based on the model on the go since Sims 2, is exactly what'll happen. It looks like an ok game and it seems to be stable which is probably the most important thing for EA this year

MintyDoris

I was mad to get my hands on it. TS2 was still an out and out favourite for me and while TS3 didn't really do much for me, I didn't really give it that much of a chance as it was nowhere near TS2 with all expension packs. I had imagined that S4 would be a great step up from TS2 at least

All in all the game is just empty. The map is annoying and limiting. I kept going to look for stuff I remembered from before (washing machines, pools, food and clothes shopping, cars) and trying to build in different ways (different foundation levels etc or a new way to place stairs) and found it incredibly lacking. The sheer amount of stuff lost from the TS3 is unforgivable though. I've played for about 4 hours (maybe more, you know yourself:)) and where previously I would eat, sleep and dream it until I got back to the PC, I chose to do houseowrk over sitting down to find yet another fundamental thing that I couldn't do

I love my SIMS but very sad to see this being launched as it is. I'll probably get the expansion packs but it would take a LOT for me to be really happy with it.

Vision of Disorder

I'm quite happy with it for a base game. I started with a single sim and have gotten married and had a son who has just aged to child, up to level 4 in my career so I'm a little ways in now. I never warmed to the Sims 3, found it a mess full of game-breaking bugs throughout the run. So far I'm pleasantly surprised by the new game. It does feel a bit stripped back but that happened the first time I played TS3 with just the base game too compared to TS2.

It can actually be a bit tricky trying to figure out how to do stuff sometimes (took me a while to realise the world map could only be accessed through my phone for example) and I miss some of the simple stuff cut out like family trees but overall I'm far more pleased with it than I expected to be and I'm not quite sure why they felt the need to forbid review copies.